Wastewater analysis: Nowhere is as much coke used as in Berlin

The “European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA)” published its latest study entitled: “Wastewater analysis and drugs – a European multi-city study”. For this purpose, municipal waste water was examined “for drugs and their metabolites in order to estimate community consumption” within the framework of corresponding analyses.

As part of the measurements, samples were collected and analyzed in the sewage treatment plants of more than 100 cities in Germany and the EU. According to the evaluation of the Berlin regional broadcaster rbb24 the figures gave the following picture:

“Nowhere else in Germany is there as much coke as in Berlin.”

With the determined cocaine residues per 1,000 inhabitants, Berlin is the undisputed number one in Germany, based on a measured value of 541 mg per day. The cities of Dortmund (350 mg) and Munich (236 mg) follow in second and third place. Magdeburg follows in fourth place, with 203 mg per 1,000 inhabitants.

In an international comparison, Berlin is in the top 20 in sixteenth place. The top trio of EU cities are Antwerp in Holland (2,381 mg), Tarragona in Spain (1,610 mg) and Amsterdam in the Netherlands (1,142 mg).

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Furthermore, the evaluation showed that Berlin is also at the top nationwide when it comes to the party drug MDMA, i.e. ecstasy. With 48 milligrams per 1,000 inhabitants per day, get loud rbb24 consumed significantly more in the capital than in the second and third places – Saarbrücken (16 milligrams) and Erfurt (13 milligrams). However, most MDMA loads in wastewater were measured in Belgium, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal.

On the other hand, the numbers on the very addictive crystal meth would become a constantly growing new drug problem in Berlin, it is said. Here consumption picked up loudly rbb24Evaluation “since 2018 by almost 70 percent”. In terms of crystal meth residues per 1,000 inhabitants, Berlin is “still behind Chemnitz, Dresden, Erfurt, Magdeburg and Nuremberg, despite the high increase”. In an EU comparison, Chemnitz and Dresden are in the front ranks, as are some cities in the Czech Republic.

Germany’s Eastern European neighbor has been considered a “crystal meth stronghold” for years, along with the Netherlands. A good ten tons of the synthetic drug are produced in the Czech Republic every year, “according to estimates by the Czech authorities, about half of them find their way to Germany – mainly to Saxony, Thuringia and Bavaria,” according to a contribution by the MDR from March 2021.

However, in no city in Brandenburg and not in Berlin was crystal meth consumption of such a measurable magnitude that it would have been listed in the top 10 in an EU comparison rbb24.

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